When journalists write about leaks, we don’t usually think about bathrooms.

But since Rogers Place opened this fall, we’ve been flush with complaints that the arena simply doesn’t have enough loos. Complaints that men, in particular, have to wait in long lines at intermission, lines so long they can’t make it back to their seats before play resumes. Complaints, too, from the neighbours along 104 Street, who are tired of fan who come streaming out when games and concerts end — and then void where prohibited, as it were.

(These clearly weren’t the kind of April showers the people in the Warehouse District were hoping for this spring.)

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According to Tim Shipton, vice-president of communications for the Oilers Entertainment Group, the arena has 315 toilet stalls plus 183 urinals — for a total of 498 places to pee.

That, Shipton insists, is far more bathroom space than the old Coliseum offered, and far more than what’s required in provincial building codes. Still, since not all bathrooms are available to all fans during a game, that might not be entirely comforting.

For the playoffs, they’ve added about three dozen Port-a-Potties, in Oilers orange, for folks to use on the way out.

It still doesn’t seem to be enough for well-watered fans, who’ve been quaffing more beer and other fluids during this playoff run, and feeling more playoff pressure, as it were.

“Wednesday, we set an all-time volume record for beverage consumption in Oilers history,” says Shipton. “It was 30 per cent higher than any previous high-water mark. And when that goes in, it must come out.”

The folks who run Rogers seem very happy to sell beverages as fast as customers can swallow them. But if you want to cash in by filling people up and up and up with fluids, you need to make reasonable accommodation for customers to relieve themselves, without getting bogged down.

Problems are also worse during playoff hockey, Shipton says, because no one wants miss a moment of the action. They don’t want to take their eyes off the whiz kids and sneak to the bathroom before the period ends. That means everyone tries to use the facilities at intermission. The arena just doesn’t have that kind of surge capacity, which leads to a very different kind of orange crush, as lines for the men’s rooms snake through the concourse.

“You’re creating a perfect storm for pressure on the system,” says Shipton. “No venue in professional sports has enough washrooms for that situation.”

There is an irony here. Most of the complaints about the long lines at Rogers Place during hockey games seem to come from men. But women have been dealing with this particular logistical problem for years. In most public facilities, the lines for the women’s room are always far longer. (We sit down. We wriggle in and out of pantyhose. We use tampons and Maxi Pads for one-quarter of the month, and one-third of our lives.) Women are culturally habituated to wait in bathroom lines. We have well-honed coping skill and tactics. But during Oilers games, where male fans dramatically outnumber women, the bladder balance seems to have shifted.

“Go Oilers Go!” their fans chant. But when the fans need to “go”? It’s not always easy.Shaughn Butts /
Postmedia

Obviously, I’ve never used a men’s room at Rogers Place. But male readers tell me they’re poorly designed, with the urinals too far apart, with awkward doors that impede the flow of the line. They tell me that the loo queues are disorganized. One fan suggested more video screens on the concourse or in the bathrooms might coax more people to use them while play is still on.

Once this first season is over, Shipton says, they’ll be doing “a full top-to-bottom review” of the functionality of the building, including bathroom bottlenecks.

“We’ve heard loud and clear from our fans and our customers that we must do more when it comes to washrooms.”

Meantime, Shipton says they’re trying to be flexible from event to event, turning some men’s bathrooms into women’s facilities, for example, during concerts that attract predominantly female fans. They’re also experimenting with putting markers on the floor in the men’s rooms to make lines more efficient. But for now, at least, fans will just have to keep their fingers — and legs — crossed.

So yes. Go Oilers, go! Go all the way. And next year, try to make sure fans have a way to go, too.

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